Chapter Fifteen Sen
Long ago, Sen’s mother sacrificed her to the sea.
It was all because of her first katana, which her father had given to her when she was five years old. She’d spent all day
chopping sugarcane stalks to get a feel for the sword’s weight. She’d watched her reflection in the river with awe, enchanted
by the sight of herself with a katana like a true warrior.
When her mother called her for dinner, Sen ran home with her sword held high, rushing in through the porch.
She tripped over her mother’s feet as she ran through the doorway. Her katana clattered to the floor, nearly chopping her
own fingers off. Her baby brother Seijiro started crying in his mother’s arms.
“Sen!” her mother said, cradling Seijiro against her shoulder. “Get that sword away from the baby!”
“Let me show you what Chichiue taught me,” Sen said. Surely that would make her mother happy. She always told Sen the importance
of hard work and practice.
“That’s between you and Chichiue,” her mother said. “I want nothing to do with it.”
“Let me show you!” Sen said, raising the sword insistently.
“Sen, no,” her mother said.
“ I want to show you! ” Sen said, raising the blade higher, just like her father always did when he was angry.
In that moment, Sen saw a strange expression on her mother’s face, one she’d never seen directed at her.
Fear.
That look was usually reserved for her father when he raised his voice. But why should Sen’s mother fear her ? She would not beat her like her father, or scold her. But still her mother’s eyes darted between the blade and Sen’s face,
frozen as if waiting to see what Sen would do.
But now, at least her mother was looking at her. Her protests had fallen silent, and Sen was the only star in her universe.
Quickly, Sen demonstrated how she unsheathed her blade and struck down in one fluid motion. Her mother watched in silence,
her eyes locked on Sen.
“Well done,” her mother said stiffly, then hurried into the kitchen, clutching Seijiro to her chest.
Sen knew the praise was a lie, but she treasured it anyway. All she’d had to do was act like her father, and her mother had
listened.
The next week, Seijiro came down with smallpox.
His skin bubbled, his breath grew shallow, his bones burned with fever. Soon, he was too weak to open his eyes.
On the fifth night of Seijiro’s illness, Sen’s mother carried her out to the sea. It had been so long since her mother had
held her that Sen didn’t even question it. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and hugged her as close as she could
while they walked across the shore.
Sen remembered the sound of crashing waves, her mother’s crisp footsteps in the wet sand, tears that fell in a cold rain onto
her face. Her mother knelt on the shore, clutching Sen to her chest, and whispered prayers to the local dragon god.
“Please accept my humble offering,” her mother whispered. “Please save my son.”
Then the ocean roared in Sen’s ears and her mouth filled with salt water. She remembered the feeling of weightlessness, the
searing cold, the ocean stealing her from her mother’s arms. She opened her eyes to the brine and her fist tangled with what
she thought was seaweed, then realized was long, black hair.
A woman emerged from the darkness of the sea and held Sen close. Her fingers traced Sen’s brine-scrubbed lips, her stinging
eyes, the scarred soles of her feet.
This lonely child is mine , she whispered, the words crystal bright in the water.
When Sen opened her eyes again, she was on the shore, alone. She walked back home, and her mother never spoke of that night.
The next day, Seijiro’s smallpox scars disappeared, his fever abated, and he happily ate a bowl of porridge in his mother’s
lap.
Sen’s mother said it was only a dream. But Sen knew, even then, when her mother lied. She knew her father would be angry if
he heard her mother praying to the old gods, for he only believed in Lord Shimazu. Since then, Sen had been living on time
stolen from the sea.
Now, at last, the ocean was calling in its debt.
Sen had long ago resigned herself to dying on a battlefield beside her father—it had been an irrefutable fact since her training
began, as natural as the changing seasons. She would die with purpose and honor.
But she had never imagined that she would die for nothing at all.
She felt lost as she walked through Lee’s world—the world that somehow existed without her, without any samurai.
Of course Sen had always known that life would go on after she died, but it was hard to fathom how unfairly bright the sun was, how green the fig trees were, how clear the sky was, as if she had never mattered at all.
She wondered if her fate was truly fixed, if any of her choices still mattered. She’d placed the sword guard under the floorboards
and then found them in Lee’s time, so clearly her actions could still impact the future. But had that choice already been
decided for her, and she was now only acting out the role she’d always been destined to play?
She had to believe she could still change her fate. If she didn’t, she was sure that without the weight of her sword on her
hip, the wind would carry her into the sky like a silk scarf. She hardly existed at all without that thin string of hope.
Sen said nothing at all as she walked beside Lee into town, afraid her words would give away her traitorous fear. Together,
they walked the narrow path from the house that led to a wider road lined with low stone walls and yuzu trees. A flock of
cranes fluttered past the burning white sun overhead, their forms jagged black shadows sweeping across the path.
Sen had seen little of the town in her own world, so she could only make vague comparisons. Her family had come to the house
behind the sword ferns in the dead of night, and Sen and her siblings hadn’t been allowed out since then, in case the imperial
soldiers recognized them. The servants went into town for errands, and her father went out on occasion to receive messages,
but Sen’s entire world in this town had been inside that house.
Lee seemed much taller as he walked beside her, no longer hunched beneath the low ceilings of the house. He squinted in the
harsh sunlight, scratching the inside of his wrist as if his pale skin couldn’t bear the touch of daylight. Even though this
was his world and not hers, he did not look like he belonged here at all. He seemed like a creature of the deep sea dragged
up to the surface.
After a few silent minutes, he spoke.
“I’m sorry about Hina,” he said.
Sen swallowed before she spoke, ensuring her voice didn’t sound pale and weak. “She dislikes me,” she said.
Lee grimaced but didn’t deny it. “I don’t know why,” he said. “She’s not usually like that.”
The why didn’t matter much to Sen. The imperial soldiers also disliked her, and she didn’t care for their reasons.
What mattered much more were Hina’s eyes.
Sen had looked in the eyes of warriors and soldiers, dying men begging for mercy and the men who cut them down anyway, and
yet she had never seen a gaze so sharp as Hina’s. The moment she looked at Sen, it was like a blade had pierced through her
eye—a quick, killing strike.
Even worse, Sen couldn’t read her at all. Sen prided herself on being able to read the stories people told in the way they
breathed, the way their gazes drifted around a room, the way they folded their hands in their lap. But somehow, Hina was a
thousand blank pages. She might have been Lee’s family, but Sen knew an enemy when she saw one.
“It doesn’t matter if she dislikes me,” Sen said at last. “She wouldn’t be the first.”
Lee pressed his lips together and Sen sensed that he hadn’t liked her answer, but she didn’t care. As long as Hina didn’t
get in Sen’s way, she didn’t matter.
As they turned a corner and Sen glimpsed the town center in the distance, they passed an older couple in blue and purple robes
on the other side of the street, helping each other off the curb.
“People still wear kimonos here?” Sen said, trying to keep her voice light. Western clothing had already started creeping
into her country by 1877, and she was sure that so far in the future, nothing of Japan would be left. Lee himself didn’t wear
Japanese clothes, after all.
“Some people do, but it’s not very common,” Lee said qui etly. He watched her like she was a needle that might prick him if he got too close. “This is a historic samurai district, so it looks a bit older than major cities. Most people don’t wear kimonos anymore, except for special occasions.”
“Historic samurai district?” Sen said, frowning and shielding her face from the sun as she looked up at him.
Lee shrugged. “They let tourists dress up in kimonos and chop up watermelons with dull katanas,” he said. “They teach them
how samurai lived.”
“ How samurai lived ,” Sen said incredulously. “Very little of my time is spent chopping up watermelons.”
Lee laughed, but it sounded forced. Laughter should have transcended language, but for some reason, Lee’s laughter sounded
like something he had learned in a classroom, like it had never truly belonged to him. Still, Sen couldn’t remember the last
time she’d heard laughter. Even her brothers knew better than to let such a sound carry through the house.
They squeezed through a market where Sen could taste the grease in the air but couldn’t smell the food at all, and then the
road widened once more. Sen had known a world made of wood, but this world was made of bricks and cement, tall wooden poles
and black wires that sliced across the sky, blaring signs in vivid colors that hummed like wasps as they passed.
In the crowded streets, Sen had taken to walking behind Lee rather than beside him so that people could pass by. She was afraid
of anyone touching her, afraid it would anchor her in this strange time. She turned her face once more toward the sky, the
mirrored sun, the world that was not her world yet felt so real.
The ground disappeared beneath her.